Jaguar will be among the 11 teams on the grid in Riyadh on Saturday.
Photograph: Xavier Bonilla/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Formula E has always enjoyed grand city centre destinations as a central tenet of the all-electric series. Beginning its fifth season on Saturday, however, there is a sense that it is in a position to deliver the drama such grand stages demand, now boasting technology, drivers and manufacturers coming together with greater coherence and credibility than ever.

The new season opens in Riyadh, the first of 13 races held across 12 meetings. There will be no race in the UK, which has not held FE since its last appearance in London’s Battersea Park in the second season, but other cities including New York, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong, Berlin and Monaco will all play host to the series that held its first round in 2014. Four years on the racing has fundamentally changed for the better.

For its first four seasons the drivers were required to change cars mid-race, because the battery capacity was unable to run a car for the requisite number of laps. It was a glaring drawback that left many unable to take it seriously and far from ideal in promoting electric power.

This season Formula E introduces its second generation car, known as Gen2. With the battery capacity doubled, a single car can now race to the finish. The cars will use up to 250 kW of power, with a top speed of almost 280 km/h.

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The BBC will show all the races online or on the red button, with one on terrestrial television.

The series has been building towards this point and it feels like a major shift. Certainly the manufacturers have been flocking to take part. Included in the 11 teams on the grid are Audi, Jaguar, Nissan, BMW, Mahindra, Penske, DS and Venturi. Next season Mercedes-Benz and Porsche will join them.

For the grand British marque Jaguar, a return to racing made most sense in Formula E and this will be their third season. The team principal, James Barclay, describes racing as part of Jaguar’s DNA and, as they are in the history books of Le Mans, so they want the tradition to continue in FE. “We want to write those stories for the future,” he said. “Jaguar without racing is not Jaguar as we know it.”

The series has been studious in trying to set itself apart from traditional forms of motor racing: the city centre circuits, most obviously, but also the new 45-minute plus one-lap timed races set to test strategic use of power, and the controversial “fan boost” – an extra 25 kW available to five drivers chosen by online voters. New this season is also “attack mode”: extra power that can be delivered in specific activation zones, marked on track and in graphics on TV. Drivers will have to go offline at a specific point to earn it and, when employed, its use will be indicated by a different set of coloured lights on the Halo device. Perhaps unsurprisingly it has been dubbed “Mario Kart” mode. The changes have not proved particularly popular with purists but fit perfectly with the intent of attracting a new, younger audience.

Felipe Massa and teammate Edoardo Mortara pose next to the Venturi team car. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

“What is really exciting for the fans is the city centre racing,” said Barclay. “It is genuinely bringing racing to audiences who haven’t seen it. Out first race back as Jaguar was Hong Kong, the first ever motor race in Hong Kong. Formula E is breaking boundaries and throwing away the rule book.”

Equally the economics make sense for manufacturers. The chassis and battery are spec components, with the money drain of aerodynamics removed from the teams’ control. Instead their focus is on software and powertrain development.

Britain’s Gary Paffett, who has tested for McLaren and Williams and won the German DTM touring car series this year for Mercedes, will make his Formula E debut for the HWA team. Next year it will become the German manufacturers’ works team.

“The fact that we don’t have to change car mid-race is a massive benefit and a huge positive for this whole championship,” Paffett said. “Motor sport for decades has shown that once you start a category with any sort of component, the development rate goes through the roof. The moment you start using these components in a competitive environment they develop so quickly. That will just keep going and that will help everyone, FE and the motoring industry.

“The car is very hard to drive, especially on street circuits that are tight and twisty. Once you get involved in driving the car and working with the engineers you see the level of engineering going into a Formula E car.”

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Paffet’s teammate will be Stoffel Vandoorne, and this year Felipe Massa also joins the grid, part of a line-up that does not feature any pay drivers. However ,the caveats that have put many off do remain: the absence of traditional engine noise and the higher top speeds boasted by other prototype racing among them.

FE has some way to go to win over fans for whom these are key elements but, as the British veteran of all four seasons Sam Bird, returning for Virgin racing, observed, FE was doing things differently despite what some had dismissed as gimmicks.

“People are not seeing the bigger picture,” Bird said. “In F1 they have a concept that delivers more overtaking with DRS. Attack mode is not too dissimilar to that, although it is more of chess game in FE, you have to judge when others will be using theirs.

“The world is changing. We are looking for alternatives to fossil fuels and electric is the way forward. Look at where road cars are going, so why not have a racing series at the cutting edge of the new technology. Normally a lot of action, lots of changes in position, lots of overtakes. It is a fun formula.”